I have a confession to make: I've always been sceptical of the hype around gravel. On paper, it’s the perfect mix – road and off-road blended into one adventurous package. But no matter how much I’ve tried to embrace it, I’ve never quite caught the bug. So this month, I headed to Girona for my first gravel race, hoping The Traka 100 could finally prove that drop-bar dirt riding is more than just watered-down mountain biking.
Somewhere outside Girona, sliding sideways on a muddy descent, one foot unclipped, I found myself wondering for the third time in as many hours: what was I doing and what was all the hype about?
A big part of my perspective comes down to where I live, in Gloucestershire, England. Gravel rides here are often 60% road and 40% gravel, making them more like a road ride with a few unpaved detours. That means spending most of the ride on a sluggish, slow-handling bike, wishing I were on something faster.
The 40% that is off-road takes me tantalisingly close to the mountain bike trails I love. But railing corners with 760 mm straight bars and 120 mm of suspension doesn’t translate to the twitchy handling and tooth-rattling ride of a gravel bike. I know you can ride gravel bikes on MTB trails, but if you’re used to ripping, it mostly feels like a downgrade.
Then there’s the adventure side. Again, through my eyes, a mountain bike often makes more sense: if you're hauling 15 kg of gear, comfort, versatility, and tyre clearance usually trump speed. In my opinion, a hardtail puts you in a better position, carries more gear, and is more versatile for these types of rides.
The one thing I hadn’t done, though, was a gravel race.
I’ve raced plenty of other disciplines: XC, downhill, crits, road. The thrill of bar-to-bar racing still gets me excited. So maybe, just maybe, this was where gravel would make sense.
Plus, I knew that if I was going to keep being sceptical about gravel, I at least owed it to the genre to show up and suffer a bit first and put my legs where my mouth was.
Where better to dip my toe in the world of gravel racing than The Traka, Europe's premier gravel event? The vibes, the atmosphere and the riding enticed me. If gravel racing was ever going to win me over, surely an event like Traka is where it was most likely to happen.
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No, 100 km is not just for the kids
The Traka, which takes place over an extended weekend, is often considered the European Unbound. Having never been to Unbound, I can’t ratify this claim, but it was certainly a hive of off-road activity, with the start/finish arena teeming with life throughout the days I was there.
The Traka 100 is the shortest and last race of the weekend, with one of the Spanish journalists I met calling it the ‘kids race,' which did a lot for my ego. [Dear Spanish journalist: you can get in the sea with that attitude. - Ed.] Yes, by gravel standards, the 100 is a modest affair. But even its 100 kilometres features 1,500 metres of climbing and takes place over a course that is 79% unpaved, an alien concept and a very distant relative of gravel as I know it.
Beyond this race, the event also hosts 200-, 360- and 560-kilometre races for those who like a serious endurance test. Considering the unknowns, the 100-kilometre event suited me perfectly with no real stresses around the course, pacing or fueling.
I took to the start with over 1,000 other riders, all with different intentions for the race. Some were there with the goal to finish in the fastest time possible, whilst others were there for the experience and to soak up the landscape (quite literally, it turned out).
I wholeheartedly put myself in the former camp, and when the weather made a turn for the worse, waking me up with its unwelcome alarm call on my hotel window at 5AM, I planned to get my head down and get around as quickly as possible with the added goal of not drowning in a quagmire.
Lesson #1: Gravel starts are hectic and sketchy
The start of The Traka 100 wasn’t what I expected. I knew the race was a mass start, but I had assumed it was a case of counting down to the start time and then heading off, desperately trying to get on terms with the front of the race before the first squeeze point.
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